- Uncategorized
- 30 Apr 18
From Loughrea, Co. Galway, Mairéad is a 19 year old who has wanted to be a famous writer since she was nine. She studies Creative Writing with English and French, enjoys karaoke, and binge watching videos of drag queens when she is meant to be working. Her guilty pleasure is country music: don't judge! Her favourite author growing up was Jacqueline Wilson. Mairead proudly has a signed copy of one of Jacqueline's books on her shelves.
And now for Mairéad’s WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW entry ...
A Stranger
You and I met exactly three years ago on this day. Well, I say ‘met’, but does it really count if it was online and not in real life? I was sixteen years old and you fifteen. It was on a dating app that we were both too young for. I had joined it because I had just come out, and I lived in a shitty small town, which is a curse if you’re gay. You flashed up on the screen: ‘It’s a match!’ And according to your profile you were precisely 28.8 km away. I scrolled through your pictures. You were pretty, very pretty. A head of messy red hair spilling out of a hat. Grinning at the camera with your perfect brace-straightened teeth and your eyes squinting, as if your smile took up too much room. You liked comic books, science and you played the guitar. And what a charmer you were. ‘Wow your so beautyfull!’ you text, accompanied with carefully selected emojis, and an apology for your bad spelling (you were dyslexic). That was all it took. I fell for you hook, line and sinker.
We texted every single day without fail. From the minute we woke up, to the minute we fell asleep, phones still in hands, mid-sentence. Your morning texts and Snapchats made my heart jump, like I’d missed the bottom step on a staircase. ‘Have a nice day at schol!’ with a pattern of hearts and virtual kisses. Our phone calls lasted hours into the night. To my surprise you had an English accent, although there were hints of a Galway one too, from having lived here so long. Phone calls soon turned into Skype calls. My homework would lie abandoned as I gazed at you, playing my favourite song on guitar, red cartoon hearts practically bursting out of my eyes. My Mam disapproved. To her it wasn’t real. ‘Who do you be on the phone to all night?’ I’d smile mysteriously. ‘No one.’ She frowned at me, concerned. ‘You’re in your own world these days.’
It became real soon enough. You began to trickle away from me. Slip through my fingers. The nights seemed so long and empty without your phone calls to fill them up. I checked for your presence for weeks, on all the apps I had you on. I was just about to press the call button, but you beat me to it. Trembling, I picked up.
You proceeded to rip my heart out of my chest, tendon by tendon. You might as well have ground it with your heel while you were at it. You had met someone else. Someone real. ‘But I love you,’ I sobbed. A pause. ‘You can’t love someone you’ve never met.’ You hung up.
It was easy to cut you out of my life. The simple, unceremonious act of pressing ‘block.’ ‘Unadd.’ ‘Delete.’ And you were gone. Three years later, I saw you. You looked at me the way you look at a stranger.
Readers’ Choice Award
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